Eos blockchain network goes live

June 15, 2018

Chris Wheal

The Eos blockchain was reported to have gone live at around a quarter-to-six on Thursday evening following nearly a week of debate over who would maintain the distributed network for the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency.

Eos finally launches its blockchain: Shutterstock

While Eos officially launched its blockchain protocol more than a week ago following a year-long initial coin offering (ICO) that raised over $4bn, it had no-one at that time to produce the blockchain that verifies eos token transactions over the network.

A week of testing

Block.one, the company behind Eos and its blockchain, spent a week of testing block producer candidates who were competing for one of the 21 validator nodes – a position where rewards are awarded as block producers verify transactions.

Eos tokens were initially launched over the Ethereum network, and a snapshot of who owned what was taken before the testing phase began so the eventual handover to the Eos network would go smoothly.

Green light vote

Once the block producers voted in favour of launching the network, it needed the final go-ahead from eos token holders. The process, as outlined by Block.one, needed 15% of token holders – or 150 million votes – to approve the 21 elected block production candidates.

As the Eos Network Monitor shows, the chain is now active, and the eos cryptocurrency is the best performing on the exchanges this morning – up 6.3% at $10.79.

Post written by Chris Wheal

Chris Wheal is editor of OpenLedger's news and features service. An award-wining business journalists himself, he runs a team of freelance journalists from across the UK and north America.